Municipal Equipment
Durable Cylinders for Waste Management, Snow Removal and Public Works
Hydroforce builds clevis and telescopic hydraulic cylinders, supplies hydraulic motors, machines pivot pins, shafts and bushings, and makes carbide milling tips, sintered pump gears and die-cast lighting housings for road maintenance machinery, wheel loaders, tipping and gritting trucks, waste yard handlers, refuse collection trucks and snow ploughs.
Why Municipal Machines Are Hard on Cylinders
A rear loader lifts a bin at every stop on its route, and the packer blade compacts the load after every few bins. Over a shift the lifter and packer cylinders go through a large number of load cycles. For cylinders that see more than 50,000 load cycles we forge the rod eye in one piece with the rod, so the eye has no weld to limit its fatigue life.
Winter service adds road salt and de-icing chloride. Brine settles on the extended rod of a plough cylinder or a gritter body ram, and each return stroke carries it back past the wiper towards the rod seal. We choose the rod coating by where the cylinder sits on the machine and how much brine reaches it.
A plough blade that meets a kerb stone or a frozen ridge of snow passes a shock load into its lift and tilt cylinders at an angle to the rod. Bin lifters and loader arms get a side load too, when a bin catches or the bucket hits packed snow. With a clevis mounting the cylinder swings with the arm through its arc, and the rod seal carries less of that side load.
Depot fleets keep their machines in service for many winters. When a cylinder or a motor wears out after several seasons, the workshop needs a unit that fits the original pins and ports.
By Type of Equipment
Built for Municipal and Public Works Fleets
Road maintenance and resurfacing machinery
drum-lift and conveyor-swing clevis cylinders, machined drum shafts, bushings and conveyor pivot pins, carbide tips for road milling and scarifying drums, and conveyor belt drive motors.
Snow and public works wheel loaders
boom-lift and bucket-tilt clevis cylinders, machined pivot pins, bushings and linkage shafts, and hydraulic motors for travel and steering drives.
Tipping and gritting trucks
tipping-body clevis cylinders, telescopic rams for longer bodies, and machined subframe pins and hinge shafts.
Waste and recycling yard handlers
boom, stick and grapple clevis cylinders, machined boom pins, bushings and slew shafts, and slew drive motors.
Refuse collection trucks (rear loader, bin lifter)
telescopic bin-lifter cylinders, packer and compaction clevis cylinders, machined lifter arm pins and tailgate hinge shafts, and motors and pumps for the body hydraulics.
Snow plough and winter maintenance vehicles
plough lift and tilt clevis cylinders, machined plough-shoe pivot pins and mounting frame shafts, carbide wear inserts for the plough cutting edge, and drive motors for spreader discs and augers.
What We Make for Municipal Equipment Builders
Six Technologies for Municipal Equipment Builders and Rebuilders
Hydraulic Cylinders
Many cylinders on a municipal machine are double-acting clevis cylinders on an arm, a boom or a tipping body. Our heavy-duty clevis design has a 110 mm bore, 350 bar working pressure, an E355 tube and a C45 rod with the eye forged in one piece. Each unit is proof tested at 525 bar. For bin lifters and long tipping bodies we build telescopic cylinders with up to 9 stages. The full range reaches 1000 mm bore and 500 bar working pressure, for operating temperatures from -50 °C to +200 °C. A standard rod gets 25–50 µm of hard chrome, ground after plating. Plough and gritter cylinders that run in brine can have a triplex nickel and chrome layer, the coating we use on marine cylinders.
Typical parts
- Telescopic bin-lifter cylinders for refuse collection trucks
- Packer, compaction and tailgate cylinders
- Lift and tilt cylinders for plough blades, loader booms and grapple arms
- Tipping cylinders and telescopic rams for tipping and gritting bodies
Hydraulic Motors and Pumps
The spreader discs, augers, conveyor belts, slew drives and travel drives on these machines are driven by hydraulic motors. We supply gear, planetary, axial-piston and radial-piston motors from 0.25 to 8000 cc/rev, rated to 450 bar, with speeds from 0.5 to 12000 rpm and an operating range from -40 °C to +120 °C. Mounting flanges are SAE, DIN or custom, so a replacement motor fits the existing drive.
Typical applications
- Spreader disc and auger drive motors for gritting bodies
- Slew drive motors for waste yard handlers
- Conveyor belt drives on road milling machines
- Repair and refurbishment of motors already in service
Machining and Gears
Pivot pins, shafts and bushings wear at every joint of these machines and are replaced at rebuilds. We turn and mill them to IT6-IT7 fits with geometric control to ISO 2768-fH, ISO 286 and ISO 1101. Our DMG MORI lathes take parts up to Ø500 mm x 1000 mm, and the Haas milling centres have a 1270 x 660 x 635 mm envelope. Rods and shafts up to 2 m in diameter and 16 m long go on the Schiess lathes.
Typical parts
- Pivot pins and bushings for loader arms, plough frames and lifter arms
- Hinge shafts for tailgates and tipping bodies
- Drum shafts and conveyor pivot pins for road milling machines
- Cylinder tubes, rods and glands for rebuilds
Aluminium Die Casting
Die casting has a small place in public works, in roadside infrastructure. We cast the housing of an LED street luminaire in one shot with its cooling fins, mounting bosses and gasket grooves, and outdoor control enclosures by the same process. Parts range from 0.05 to 30 kg in EN AC-43400, EN AC-44300 and EN AC-46000, with walls from 1.5 mm and as-cast tolerance ±0.1-0.3 mm. We then powder coat or anodise them.
Typical applications
- Finned housings for LED street luminaires
- Outdoor enclosures for lighting controls and instrumentation
Powder Metallurgy and MIM
The gear pumps and hydraulic units that feed the cylinders on these machines use pump gears and gerotors. We press and sinter them to a final density of up to 97%, with a tolerance of ±0.05 mm as sintered. A sintered gear takes up to 30% less material than a gear cut from bar.
Typical applications
- Sintered pump gears for gear pumps
- Gerotors for hydraulic units
Cemented Carbides
On a municipal machine carbide is used where the machine cuts or scrapes the road surface. A milling or scarifying drum carries carbide tips that hold their edge against asphalt and aggregate, and a plough blade can carry carbide wear inserts along its cutting edge. We press and sinter the carbide in-house, in grades across the ISO 513 range at 1,400-2,000 HV, with K40 for heavy impact wear. Finished parts are diamond ground to ±0.01 mm.
Typical applications
- Carbide tips for road milling and scarifying drums
- Carbide wear inserts for plough cutting edges
Cost Logic
Where the Budget Goes, and How We Keep the Price Down
A depot or a body builder compares our cylinder with the catalogue part it replaces. We put the money into what decides how many winters the cylinder lasts on the machine and keep the rest of the order standard.
| We invest in | How we keep the price down |
|---|---|
| Pressure testing of every cylinder at 1.5× working pressure, with a leak check and a full stroke test | Standard clevis mounting where the design allows |
| Solid forged rod eyes, induction-hardened rods, hard chrome ground after plating | Triplex or other special rod coatings only where salt or chloride exposure needs them |
| Precision machining of pin bores and mounting faces to IT6-IT7 fits | One setup for a batch of identical fleet units, sensors only where the control system uses them |
| Full documentation: EN 10204 3.1 material certificate, test protocol, serial number on every cylinder | Die and tooling cost spread over the series for die-cast housings and sintered pump gears |
Aftermarket
Rebuilds Between Seasons and Repeat Orders
Municipal workshops rebuild their cylinders and motors in the off-season, before winter service starts. A worn cylinder often comes in with no drawing. We measure the bore, rod, stroke and mounting geometry on the sample and quote a rebuild or a new cylinder in the same envelope. If the rod eye failed at a weld, we can make the new rod with a forged eye.
A spare seal kit is supplied with each cylinder on request, and more kits can be ordered later by the serial number engraved on the body. Workshops that rebuild cylinders themselves can order rods, tubes and pins separately. A fleet with several identical trucks or loaders can order the same part as one batch before the season. We make the batch in one setup and test every piece. Drawings, CNC programs and test records stay on file, so a repeat order years later matches the first unit.
By drawing
By worn sample
Batches for a fleet
Seal kits by serial number
Documentation
Standards and Documentation
Our component documentation refers to these standards.
| Standard | What it covers |
|---|---|
| ISO 6020 / ISO 6022 | Mounting dimensions for hydraulic cylinders, 160 bar and 250 bar series |
| ISO 4413 | Safety requirements for hydraulic systems and components |
| ISO 10100 | Acceptance tests for hydraulic cylinders |
| EN 10204 3.1 | Material certificate with traceable test results, on request |
| ISO 2768-fH / ISO 286 / ISO 1101 | General tolerances, fits and geometric tolerances for machined parts |
| EN 1706 | Chemical composition and mechanical properties of cast aluminium alloys |
| ISO 5755 / ISO 22068 | Specification for sintered PM and MIM materials |
| ISO 513 | Classification of cemented carbide grades |
Standards for the complete refuse collection vehicle, winter maintenance vehicle, loader or attachment are the responsibility of the equipment builder or the body builder. For the part we made we supply its material certificate, dimensional report and test protocol, and for a cylinder its serial number.
Our quality system is certified to ISO 9001:2015. More on inspection stages and equipment: Quality.
Quality
Quality Control
Every order goes through three inspection stages. We check incoming steel against its certificate and run a spectrochemical analysis where the grade matters. During machining we measure with Renishaw probes on the machine and on a CMM with an error under 3 µm, with quality checkpoints every 45 machine hours. At final acceptance we check dimensions, function, surface finish and the documentation.
Each hydraulic cylinder is pressure tested at 1.5× working pressure. We check every seal for leaks, run a full stroke with no stick-slip and measure the chrome thickness by gauge. Every rod gets a measurement record for straightness, diameter, roughness and hardness. Motors and pumps are function tested and pressure tested, and their performance is compared with the catalogue values. Die-cast housings are X-rayed for porosity where the part must be pressure tight. Sintered pump gears are checked for density, hardness and dimensions on every lot.
More detail: Quality.
From Hydroforce
From Our Workshop
Hydraulic Piston Rods: The Machining Chain That Defines Cylinder Life
How rods up to 16 m long are turned, induction hardened, chrome plated, ground and polished to Ra ≤ 0.1 µm. Telescopic cylinders for waste lifters use these rods.
Read more → Hydraulic CylindersHeavy-Duty Hydraulic Cylinder with Solid Forged Piston Rod, 350 bar, Clevis Mount
A double clevis cylinder with a 110 mm bore and a rod eye forged in one piece with the rod. Articulating arms, booms and tipping bodies usually take this mounting.
Read more → Die CastingAluminum Die-Cast Housings for LED Lighting and Industrial Applications
Heat sinks, lamp bodies and outdoor enclosures from 0.05 to 30 kg, with the fins, bosses and gasket grooves formed in the die. Street lighting fixtures and outdoor control enclosures are cast this way.
Read more →Procurement FAQ
FAQ
Can you rebuild or replace a worn cylinder from a refuse truck, a plough or a loader with no drawing?
Yes. Send us the cylinder or its dimensions. We measure it and quote a rebuild or a new cylinder to the same mounting dimensions.
Which rod coating do you use for cylinders exposed to road salt?
Hard chrome, ground after plating, is our standard. Plough and gritter body cylinders that run in brine and de-icing chloride can get a triplex nickel and chrome layer. Tell us where the cylinder sits on the machine and we choose the coating with you.
We run several identical trucks and loaders. Can you supply the parts as a batch?
Yes. Once the first part is checked against your drawing or sample, further units run as one batch, with the same test and documentation on every piece. We keep the drawing and program for later orders.
What is the minimum order and the lead time?
A single cylinder is fine, with the same certificates and tests as a series batch. For motors, tell us the quantity and we will quote. Die casting and powder metallurgy are tool-based series processes, so send us your volumes and we will size the tooling and quote. We quote the lead time with the offer: bore and stroke, the rod coating for salt exposure and the documentation package decide the time.
Related capabilities:
Get a Quote
Send us a drawing, a sample or a photo of the part you need, and tell us which machine it is for: road maintenance and resurfacing machinery, wheel loaders, tipping and gritting trucks, waste yard handlers, refuse collection trucks, or snow ploughs and winter maintenance vehicles. We will quote the hydraulic cylinder, the motor, the machined pin or shaft, the carbide tip, the sintered pump gear or the die-cast housing, tested before dispatch and delivered with its documentation.